Well well well, to be honest, I can say that on the personal level I have been living one of the best kick offs for a year in almost a decade; I wish I could say the same about businesses…especially in Dubai.

So far it has been full of official holidays (called and uncalled for), natural disasters, and lately infrastructure problems!

For those of you who still do not know, the following countries had almost no connectivity at some point in the past week, and very slow, unreliable one for the most of it:

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Kuwait

Egypt

Saudi Arabia

Qatar

Bahrain

Pakistan

India

All due to a sudden damage that hit the 2 undersea cables which connect this part of the world to the rest, gateways being Egypt from this side and Italy from the other. It is worth noting that there is no official reason of what actually happened to those cables still.

All this given, I have been thinking of how fragile the situation can be for businesses, especially ours which relies on Internet as both an asset and a deliverable.

I remember back in the day when I was in Lebanon, the government (and some small private ISPs for that matter) had satellite backups for such scenarios, I wonder how come there is none on this richer, more advanced side of the region which is more dependent on the service availability as well.

According to CNN, three countries were spared this major chaos: Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine – excuse me, but aren’t these the hot spots in this region?

It is also worth noting how dependent we have become on technology, which makes a contingency plan a mandatory; international calls were crippled, salaries were delayed, Cable TV quality and signal strength dropped significantly, and phones (VoIP) struggled.

Well all I can say is: Shame for some, Hats-off for others, and I still say: Very Bizarre!